Memory in Motion
by restive nature
Summary: Through a magical mix-up, Willow ends up in the Impala, disoriented, terrified, facing the barrel of a gun and somehow... only six years old.
1. C01- Frustration Rises

Title: Memory In Motion

Chapter Title: Frustration Rises

Author: Restive Nature

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to BtVS. They belong to Whedon & Mutant Enemy. I also do not own the rights to Supernatural. They belong to Eric Kripke and The CW.

Rating: PG-15

Genre: Crossover

Type: Humor, Angst

Pairing: DaddyDean/ WeeWillow

Summary: Through a magical mix-up, Willow ends up in the Impala, disoriented, terrified, facing the barrel of a gun and somehow... only six years old.

Spoilers/ Time line: Post series for Buffy and late season one of Supernatural.

Feedback: Always welcome!

Distribution: Ask first please.

A/N: This is a challenge response to pezgirl's The Little Demon Hunting Challenge at the Twisting the Hellmouth site. Challenge is as follows-

late season one- before Dean gets hurt and the car crash  
Buffy: post-season 7

A fight with a troublesome demon end with Willow being de-aged and thrown into the Supernatural reality and into Dean's car.

Must have:

Willow being between 4 and 13  
Willow not having her memories  
Willow still being a witch

Memory In Motion

Chapter One

Frustration Rises

"Over here Mara!" Willow called out, trying to hold back the demon that had cottoned on to the groups plan to launch a pre-emptive strike on it's coven. The patriarch of the group, planning a sort of power upgrade by ingesting the bodies of several humans that it had deemed worthy, had somehow found out about Willow and the few young witches that she was mentoring, as well as her lover Kennedy, a relatively newly awakened Slayer, planning to put a stop to the mischief.

"Yeah, yeah," the girl, the latest addition to the group grumbled as she ran, carrying an armful of candles. Willow winced as the demon got a swipe in, wondering where the hell Kennedy was. Normally she would have been right at Willow's side for the spell casting, not trusting the other's to protect her soon to be wife. But an argument a few nights ago, had been allowed to fester and grow, instead of being discussed and a solution found. Willow sort of had the idea that Kennedy wasn't going to change her position on her thoughts about Willow's magic use. But this situation, fighting alone, it was something that she was turning to more and more, not relying on Kennedy to have to save her.

After the fall of Sunnydale, Willow had embraced the fact that she could not refrain from magic altogether. Nor could she use it for every day things, like she had before. So she went the only route that she had deemed acceptable. She used the magic as much as she had to to save innocents and that alone was all. Helping for the greater good. She had a self imposed rigid structure to ensure that she wouldn't go down that bad road again. And that was what Kennedy had been upset about. In the crux of the problems they had argued about, it was almost central to every argument that Kennedy had made.

Kennedy had wanted to be Willow's everything. As Tara had once been for her. Oh, she hadn't put it that way, but that was what it boiled down to. Kennedy was jealous of the people in Willow's life. She could accept the original core Scoobies, because they were too well established to be routed out. And her parents, because after all, family was family and nothing could change who you were related to by blood. Even if in some cases, you might not know it. But the newer people, like the coven in Devon, and the practitioners she had found in South America, where they were just setting up a recruiting station now. Those were the people that Kennedy had targeted for her wrath.

Willow had tried to point out that Kennedy had people in her life that she relied on for things too. But Kennedy had maintained that the Slayer was built to work alone. To fight and conquer and win the day, to then come home at the end to her significant other. To be the alpha, the lead, the one that everyone else always listened to. And anytime Willow brought up Buffy, and the way her friend had set the Slaying rules, the Council and the world on it's ear, Kennedy got even more defensive. And Kennedy's reponding answer was always Faith.

Faith! Willow could snort mentally to herself still at the thought of the formerly dark Slayer. Even Faith had needed other people's help. And a helluva a lot of it. A Watcher, Buffy, Angel, Wes, Giles, friends, the penal system, all of that and more before she had finally grown enough to be an effective weapon for good. Granted, Faith hadn't started out with the best life before she had received her Slayer powers.

"Mara!" she barked, distracted just enough that the demon managed to slip past her defenses, catching her slightly unaware in a choke hold, lifting her from the ground, until her feet were dangling.

"Yeah, yeah!" the girl snapped back as she fell to her knees to start the power circle with the candles. Willow wanted to use her telepathic abilities to warn the girl that doing so on an undefined circle line was going to let the spell get out of hand. But the lack of oxygen to her brain that she was experiencing interfered with that function. She was better off to concentrate on a nonverbal spell that would get the demon off her.

"You know, Willow," the girl complained, not even noticing that her supposed beloved mentor was being choked to death not even five feet from her, all because she was so eager to prove herself in her chosen field. "It's not like I don't know what I'm doing here. I managed not to get dead for months before you showed up!"

Willow refrained from rolling her eyes. That had been sheer dumb luck on the girl's part. And where were the others? Surely they couldn't have had that much problem with the rest of the clan. They weren't as powerful as the patriarch. He was the one that held the power and doled it out when necessary.

"Mara," she gasped, trying to get the girl's attention.

"Don't rush me!" the girl whined as she called flame to light the candles. A bad sign when she should have had a lighter in her pocket. Or even matches. Instead she was taking shortcuts. And making excuses to herself that it was okay. "You always rush me. Every time you tell me, take my time, do it right. Well now that I am," the girl turned to finally address Willow face to face, after having lit the candles and saw the predicament the older witch was on. "Oh! Oh crap! Right, uh... Filiolus o tener audio volo," the girl squeaked out.

_'Gods young, listen to me?'_ Willow automatically translated in her head and winced again. All this time trying to pound it into the girl's head that speaking Latin didn't immediately translate into a spell. Especially an unfocused spell like she was starting with. Too many variables and too much could go wrong. And which Gods were Mara trying to summon? Every religion had the old and the new. As lights began to swirl around the area, indicating that dang it, someone really was listening, Willow's consciousness began to fade. She was barely aware of Mara's voice rising as she completed her on the fly spell.

With a commanding clap of her hands, Mara finished, fully expecting the demon to just be gone. And truly, she no longer heard it's heavy, growling snarl as it had choked Willow. She was just pushing off her knees, to climb to her feet as Kennedy, leading the few warriors they had, as well as the other witches, ran into the area.

"Willow!" the eldest of the Slayers in South America, the only one to have fought in the final battle of Sunnydale, screamed out. She rounded on Mara, her fist clenched tightly around the sword that she preferred to carry into battle. "What did you do?" she shrieked at the young witch. The sword extended to where Willow... had been...

"Oh shit," Deanna breathed out as her sort of friends and somewhat colleagues swarmed around and then past her, kneeling to look at the scorched ground.

"Some spell took her," Rennie glanced up at Kennedy and then glared hard at Mara. "What spell did you use? I can't imagine Willow would go with a demon if she relocated it to somewhere safer."

"I uh..." Mara began, her eyes darting between Kennedy and the senior witch, second in power to Willow in this continent's main coven.

"You tell her!" Kennedy hissed. "Tell her so we can bring Willow back! Now!"

The girl gulped and glanced down at the circle she had cast. She knew, Willow had warned her, but she hadn't listened. And now, she was really in for it!

MiM~MiM~MiM

Dean Winchester stormed from the hospital that he'd been casing, for more reasons than one. He'd had that bastard of a witch not feet from him, that shtriga, and there was nothing that he could do about it. He knew, his gut twisting with it, that there was a way to kill it. But the alternative to all of the methods that they were used to using, he and Sam, learned at their father John's behest, this was one of the worst. Having to use a kid as bait to draw the life sucking ancient witch into their trap, it wasn't an idea that filled him with puppies and rainbows and that happy crap.

But now, having failed once, when he was young, just a boy in most people's estimation, but not the world he lived in, Dean now had a second chance. And he had to find a way to convince his brother of that. Because he would never be able to live with himself, with the guilt, if this thing continued to feed on innocent children.

Saving anyone's life was preferable to letting them be hurt. But having been the victim of the supernatural as a child himself, kids would always have a special place in Dean's heart. Their innocence, their ability to trust, it had to be protected, because regular life was enough to beat that out of a person as they grew up. He climbed into the family's '67 Chevy Impala, pulling the door shut behind himself, mentally reviewing what they would need to have to safely attack this bastard.

The doctor! He should have seen it right away, but hadn't. Caught up in old horrid memories that he couldn't escape. A time when he failed, when he had almost lost Sammy and had forever lost his father's trust. That trust was a thing he'd been trying to earn back every day of his life. And now he had the chance to redeem himself in his father's eyes. In his own eyes. He leaned forward to insert the key into the ignition, but before he could start the car, a blinding flash of light caught him off guard. He simultaneously cringed away from the light, holding up his right hand to protect himself from the flash, while his left hand was automatically reaching for the Rutger under his car seat.

When the light died and he was swiveling around to see what the hell had happened, he heard a small voice pipe up.

"Oh no! Oh no. Not good. This is not good!"

He saw a small, redheaded girl in one of those jumper dresses and a turtleneck, her eyes wide, as her feet tried to find purchase, just barely achievable on the messy floor mat, on the passenger's side of Dean Winchester's beloved car.

No, this wasn't good at all. Dean belatedly realized that he held the pistol, when he saw the girl's eyes narrow in on the point of the barrel, her green eyes nearly crossing.

"An' it just got worse. Oh no!" The little redhead began to hyperventilate and Dean winced, wondering briefly if the shtriga had been able to read his mind or some shit like that when he'd been in the hospital. Was this some sort of distraction? There was one thing that he did know. The kid was right.

Things just had gotten worse.


	2. C02- Murphy's Law Or Something Like That

Title: Memory In Motion

Chapter Title: Murphy's Law or Something Like That

Author: Restive Nature

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to BtVS. They belong to Whedon & Mutant Enemy. I also do not own the rights to Supernatural. They belong to Eric Kripke and The CW.

Rating: PG-15

Genre: Crossover

Type: Humor, Angst

Pairing: DaddyDean/ WeeWillow

Summary: Through a magical mix-up, Willow ends up in the Impala, disoriented, terrified, facing the barrel of a gun and somehow... only six years old.

Spoilers/ Time line: Post series for Buffy and late season one of Supernatural.

Feedback: Always welcome!

Distribution: Ask first please.

A/N: This is a challenge response to pezgirl's The Little Demon Hunting Challenge at the Twisting the Hellmouth site. Please refer to chapter one for challenge details.

Memory In Motion

Chapter Two

Murphy's Law or Something Like That

Dean stared in horror at the thing that had appeared in his car. Talk about karma or... or Murphy's law or some shit like that. Thinking about needing a kid for bait, and bam! One appears. One that was freakin' the hell out.

But the thing was, while he might be called a pessimist and a conspiracy theorist by certain quarters of the normal world, Dean called it prudency. You couldn't always take things at face value. He had been around the block too many times not to distrust everything. Especially when something you needed just freakin' popped into your car, looking all big eyed cute, innocent and teary.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded tightly, curbing the instant _what_ that he would normally want to know. Just in case this kid actually was a kid and something bigger was at play, he didn't want to scare her too badly. Though in his opinion, sometimes kids were better off knowing the truth than taking some of the chances that they did.

"W-w-w-w-Willow," the girl gasped out finally, as she continued to hyperventilate. Dean was of two minds about what to do. On one hand, the sight of the kid scared mindless tugged at hundreds of heartstrings. But on the other, if this shtriga was as smart as it was purported to be, it could be using this thing exactly to get under Dean's defenses. Or a distraction. But then the twitching began and he was worried that someone might notice and if they did, assume the worst and he'd be nose deep in boiling hot water with no way to go but down.

He lowered the gun just a little, keeping it at the ready as his eyes flicked down to the seat between them. With the gun still in his left hand, he wasn't as comfortable using his weaker hand, but he would if he had to, he used his right to reach for an old take out bag. He shook whatever contents were left in the bag onto the floor and tossed it to the girl. She stared down at the bag on her lap and then brought terrified eyes up to him again.

"Breath into it," Dean mimicked lifting his hand to his face. The girl slowly picked up the bag and seeming to understand, brought the opening of the bag to her face. She inhaled once and threw it back down.

"Ewww! It smells like the back of a refrigerator after the power goes out," she complained. Dean curbed the responsive smirk. He had no doubt that it probably did. The girl glared at the bag for a moment before remembering the bigger threat and turned back to Dean.

"Maybe it does, but it worked, didn't it?" he pointed out and the girl's eyes widened momentarily before she glanced down at herself.

"Uh, yeah," she nodded slowly. "But it didn't make the gun go away."

"No, it didn't," Dean agreed. "Because that's not going to happen until I figure out what the hell happened here."

"Oh! You said the H word."

"Yeah kid, I did," he complained gruffly. "Don't tell me you've never heard it before."

"Uh huh," she nodded brightly. "My daddy says it when he tries to build things. And then my mother explains why his negative example is detrimental to my mental well being."

Dean's jaw almost dropped to gape. And people thought his upbringing was skewed. "Okay," he drawled, unsure. There were very few ways that he could figure out if this really was a kid, because he sure as hell wasn't going anywhere with a demon in the car.

"My mom's a psyche actress," Willow offered and Dean suppressed the urge to chuckle.

"Psychiatric?" he corrected her and she nodded quickly. "Sorry kiddo."

"Oh no," she shook her head then. "It's very interesting."

"Uh huh," he breathed out through his nose, completely unconvinced. He shook his head, his lips pursed as he regarded the bright redhead. "Look, like I said, I don't trust what's happening here. So do me a favor and hold still, will ya?"

"You're not going to touch me in my doll places, are you?" the girl asked, a certain innocence in the question kept Dean from snarling out a disgusted explicative.

"No!" he protested loudly. "I'm not some sick bastard. Okay?" She nodded slowly and once she had placed her hands in her lap to wait, Dean transferred his weapon to his right hand and watched her face. "Cristos."

There was no response and when he grunted the girl relaxed slightly.

"What was that supposed to do?" she wondered. "Was it a magic word?"

"Sort of," Dean allowed, turning an eye to watch carefully, a few people passing in front of the car in the parking lot.

"Well," the girl began, "well maybe it didn't work because I'm Jewish. Maybe..."

Dean chuckled then. "So what do you recommend I use? Yahweh?"

The girl braced herself, squeezing her eyes shut and waited. But after a moment had passed, she let one eye open and focused on Dean. "Did it work?"

"Yeah kid, worked perfect," Dean nodded. He had one more acceptable test that he could perform, and one less so. "Can you do me a favor?" Willow looked eager when he asked and Dean was hard pressed to remember that this, in his reality, could be some evil son of a bitch riding around in a kid. A kid! She looked so damned much like Sammy when he was young that he had to swallow heavily. "Reach in that glove box and pass me the flask," he directed as he tried to swallow down the bitter bile that was curling up his throat.

The girl turned to do so, but when she pulled it back out and turned it over in her hands, she turned to ask him, "are you old? Because my friend says you have to be old to drink. But that's only booze. Like his dad. His dad likes to drink booze a lot. Is this booze? My friend's Daddy has a booze bottle like this that he keeps in his shirt pocket."

"Nope, just water," he told her, cutting across her little ramble. Bracing the gun enough that he could also hold the flask of holy water, he took a swig and then held it out to her. "Have some."

"O-okay," she stammered, carefully accepting the flask. "I'm..."

"It's part of the test," he warned her. "I only drank some so that you'd know I wasn't trying to poison you."

"You'd poison me!" she shrieked and Dean winced and then glanced around to see if anyone else had heard.

"No!" he protested. "I just wanted... just take a drink. Please!" He cringed a little as Willow's eyes were focused on the gun that had been waved around a little and suddenly she was gulping down the rest of the contents. She was gasping again and Dean feared another hyperventilation episode, but when she was done she flushed slightly.

"I drank it all, sorry," she half whined, cradling the flask worriedly. Dean watched her again for signs of possession, but there was nothing.

"That's okay kid," he shook his head and returning the safety on the gun, leaned over to tuck it back under the seat. "I can always get more. You feel okay?"

"Ummm," she hesitated and Dean's sharp eyes were quickly back on her. The flush hadn't disappeared. "I have to... go."

"Go where?"

"The... the bathroom," she squirmed under his raised eyebrow gaze and then tucked her hands under her thighs. "But I can wait. It's okay." She squirmed a little more and Dean tiredly shook his head. He was wasting time. Time that could be better spent figuring out how to take that shtriga out. Quickly making his decision, he turned back to the kid.

"Look, there's something going on that I need to take care of," he explained. "Where do you live Willow? I'll drop you off."

"816 Sycamore Street," she responded promptly. Dean nodded and turned forward to start up the ignition.

"Sycamore, okay," he muttered to himself, wondering if he could find a map or would have to call his brother, while the girl straightened herself out as well.

"Sunnydale, California, the United States of America," she rambled on, not realizing that her words had caught Dean's attention and not in a good way. "continent of North America, Western Hemisphere, of the planet earth. And I should be in the back seat."

"What?" Dean demanded, focusing still on the initial part of her address.

"I should be in the back seat," Willow repeated. She grew thoughtful looking and pronounced with care, "it's stah-tis-tickly safer."

"Yeah, yeah," Dean shook his head. "What city did you say you're from?"

"Oh," Willow's mouth rounded into a small smile. "Sunnydale."

"Crap!"

"You said the C word!"

"Which was better than the S word," he snarked back, shaking his head.

"Or the F word," Willow agreed. Dean couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped his lips. Mini Samantha in the co-pilot's seat.

"Tell me Willow," he grinned, even though his mind was whirling with the implications of what she had revealed. "You like school?"

She nodded happily. "Miss Tattersall is nice. And I have a best friend. I get to color and two times a week, I go with Mrs. Gettle to do advanced reading. And I'm learning third grade math. Even though I'm only in first grade."

"Wow," he nodded, trying to sound suitably impressed, when all he was wondering was why the hell this shit didn't happen to his brother. Why didn't she know her address here? And if it wasn't a simple case of her family having just moved here, how in the hell she got from California to Wisconsin. Well, all he could do was get her some place safe and figure out where to go from there. Being a Winchester meant having a game plan, even if it fell to pieces the moment your brain thought of it.

Normal course would be to drop her at the cop shop, but with his track record, that'd net him even more problems. Maybe they could just get to the motel and call her parents to come get her. She was maybe, well, probably here visiting someone and didn't have the address handy.

"Willow?" he questioned as he let the engine idle, "what's your parent's number?" She instantly reeled off a phone number, but Dean recognized the California area code and shook his head. "No, I mean their cell phone." She looked doubtful.

"What's a cell phone?" she asked politely. Dean frowned and reached into his pocket to show her his. She looked interested enough as she reached forward, hesitant until he nodded to her that it was all right to turn it over in his hand. Then she sat back and shook her head. "They don't have a cell phone."

"Great," Dean sighed. Techni-phobes, probably, of some sort or another. Really, who didn't have a cell phone in this day and age?

"So who are you visiting?" he tried again. The little girl shook her head, confused again.

"I'm not allowed to visit anyone," she told him. "Miss Gold picks me up from school and we go straight home. I have a nutrition an' then do my homework. And then I read until it's time for dinner. Then I have a bath an' go to bed," she finished happily. "But that's on school days. I can play on the weekends."

"Okay," Dean sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Try again, and calmly, he reminded himself. "Did your parents bring you with them to visit someone, or did you just move here?"

"No," Willow answered quietly, seeming concerned as she looked out the windshield of the car, very concerned that she wasn't telling him what he wanted to hear.

"So what were you doing before you were here... in the car?" he wondered. The girl looked down in her lap and her shoulders hunched over. "Willow?"

"I... I don't remember," she murmured so quietly that Dean barely heard her. He leaned a little closer and tried to smile encouragingly when all he felt like doing was thunking his head against his seat, repeatedly.

"Well, were you in school, or at home?"

"I don't remember," she repeated and then shook her head. "I don't remember!" she wailed this time and Dean cringed at the sudden increase in noise volume from her.

"Shh, shh," he tried to quiet, soothing wasn't even a word for him at the moment. "It's okay kid. No problem, just don't..." he glanced out the windshield to see that a few people were staring at him in disapproval. "Willow, come on kid, quit!" he hissed. "You're gonna get me in trouble right now. Trouble that frankly, I can't afford, the kind that'll lock me up for twenty years."

The girl stopped her wailing, though the tears continued to stream copiously down her cheeks. "What kind of trouble?" she asked breathlessly, though it seemed to be more from her crying jag than any awe.

"The... doll touching thing," he tried to explain without truly explaining. "Even though I haven't. But... I don't know what to do here, kid. I take you to the cops to get you help and I get burned."

"Do they have a lost and found?" she asked with a sniffle. Dean sadly shook his head, though her vacillation between hopefulness and curiosity, mingled with the other was kind of cute. He ruffled her hair quickly and then decided.

"Look, we can go see my brother," he offered. "He might have some idea how the he- heck this happened. And he's better with computers. But, there's gonna have to be some ground rules."

"Yes sir," she nodded, calming even more now.

"First of all, you're right," he decided. "You should be in the back seat." The moment the last word left his lips, Willow was scrambling to climb over the seats. Dean rolled his eyes and just narrowly avoided being kicked in the head by her Mary Jane's. "All right," he twisted around to eye her as he ran over what could be acceptable rules for a little girl in his car. "Buckle up and listen good." She followed his immediate advice as Dean turned back and reached once more for his cell phone. "Rule number one," he improvised as he pulled up the texting feature of his phone. "Driver is always right. About directions, music, everything, no matter what anyone else says."

He saw, from the corner of his eye in the rearview mirror, Willow nodding, her serious little face taking in everything he said as she now sat primly, her hands on her lap.

"Second, just for now, we're gonna play a game of pretend," he told her as his thumb punched the appropriate buttons on the phone.

MiM~MiM~MiM

Sam glanced at the phone nestled next to his laptop. It had chirped, denoting an incoming message. Finishing typing another idea into the on line search engine, he pulled his hands back and reached for the phone. There was a message from Dean and since Sam had just talked to him recently, he sighed, figuring it for a reminder to pick up some food. Even though it was Dean that had the car. What he read instead, made him sigh even more.

_Dude, things just got worse. Brace yourself and just go with it._

Now what in the hell could that mean? With the brother that Sam had? One never knew


End file.
